And conversation never flags when all, more or less, are congenial; when
all are well-informed, well-bred and resolved to please. Yet there is a
canker in that whole assembly; that canker is a want of confidence; no
one trusts the other; Lady Mary's encouragement of Hervey surprises and
shocks the Princess Caroline, who loves him secretly; Hervey's
attentions to the queen of letters scandalizes Pope, who soon afterwards
makes a declaration to Lady Mary. Pope writhes under a lash just held
over him by Lady Mary's hand. Hervey feels that the poet, though all
suavity, is ready to demolish him at any moment, if he can; and the only
really happy and complacent person of the whole party is, perhaps,
Pope's old mother, who sits in the room next to that occupied for
dinner, industriously spinning.
This happy state of things came, however, as is often the case, in close
intimacies, to a painful conclusion. There was too little reality, too
little earnestness of feeling, for the friendship between Pope and Lady
Mary, including Lord Hervey, to last long. His lordship had his
affectations, and his effeminate nicety was proverbial. One day being
asked at dinner if he would take some beef, he is reported to have
answered, 'Beef? oh no! faugh! don't you know I never eat beef, nor
_horse_, nor curry, nor any of those things?' Poor man! it was probably
a pleasant way of turning off what he may have deemed an assault on a
digestion that could hardly conquer any solid food.
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